Audio guide stop for Oscar Bluemner, A Situation in Yellow, 1933

NARRATOR: Artist Oscar Bluemner once wrote, “Listen to my work as you listen to music. Look at the space filled with color and try to feel—feel; do not insist on understanding.”

Look at the yellow areas in the painting. The shapes are reminiscent of a house, and the vertical grey forms might suggest trees and a building. This isn’t a purely abstract image. But look at the top of the canvas: if this is the background—the sky—why is it red? The use of color gives the whole a deep, emotional pull. Bluemner said that he used the intensity of colors to express strong feeling, borrowing his ideas from the German philosopher Goethe.